REPORT OP ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY. 25 



and tbey are .studied, compared, and classified. This work is essential 

 to their intelligent utilization, and necessarily i)recedes installation and 

 publication. It is tlie work which most constantly employs the atten- 

 tion of the curators and is referred to at length in the reports which 

 they have submitted. 



Eesearches having in view publication of results have been conducted 

 by Prof. O. T. Mason, Dr. Walter Hough, Mr. J. E. Watkins, and Dr. 

 Thomas Wilson. In several cases collectors have engaged in the study 

 of the collections made by themselves. This is true especially of Dr. 

 Fewkes, Mr. Gushing, Mrs. M. C. Stevenson, and Mr. Stewart Culin. 

 Mr. J. D. McGuire has i^repared a monograph on tobacco i)ipes, employ- 

 ing the collections of the Divisions of Ethnology and Prehistoric Archse- 

 ology, and Dr. Edward Eggleston, and Dr. H. Carrington Bolton have 

 made studies of portions of the Copp collection of colonial relics in the 

 Division of History and Biography. 



INSTALLATION. 



Display of collections constitutes a most important function of the 

 Museum; it may be regarded as the essential function, since all others 

 are as well subserved by the storehouse and laboratory. Public dis- 

 play is the feature that gives the Museum its status as an educational 

 institution. The all-imj)ortant question then is, in what way and by 

 what methods shall the department undertake to instruct by means of 

 its exhibits? Exhibition is not regarded simply as the presentation of 

 the materials of a museum so that the public may see them. The 

 essential point is the presentation in such logical order that the great 

 truths of human history may be told in the briefest and dearest way. 



There are several methods of i^resenting the materials of anthro- 

 pology, but two of these are of primary importance and are used to the 

 practical exclusion of the others. The first is the geographical or 

 ethnograpliieal assemblage, and the second the developmental or genetic 

 assemblage. Other methods may be classed as special; they are the 

 chronological, the comparative, the individual, etc. The first mentioned 

 methods are adapted to the presentation of the general truths of 

 anthropology, and the special methods are available for limited por- 

 tions of the field — for special or limited ideas which are to be fully 

 elaborated. 



THE GEOGRAPHICAL OR ETHNOGRAPHICAI, ARRANGEMENT. 



The most natural assemblage of the materials illustrating the peoples 

 of the world is in groups related one to another as are the peoples 

 themselves in more or less well-defined geograi)hical divisions. Thus 

 assembled it is possible for the student or the ordinary museum visitor 

 to make his studies pretty much as he would make them in traveling 

 from country to country. The museum on this i)lan is a miniature 

 world, so far as the objective materials of anthropology are capable of 



